Well I thought it'd be funny to write a trip report about everyone's favorite, weed. But then i started really thinking, there are quite a few interesting things that happen on a marijuana trip. I thought, "can all of these interesting effects really be from just THC? there must be some other chemical at work." But, before that assumption is made, I need to review what exactly THC does in the brain, and think if there is any way that it could possibly cause all of the other weed side effects. So I got high, and this is what I wrote. "How the psychedelic properties of the weed high function: After about 10 minutes When the THC finally enters your blood and collects in the brain, you begin the first stage, the getting high stage. dopamine levels rise quickly in your system and you get a big smile on your face, you feel very happy and are feeling excited about what's to come. For about 15 minutes in this stage, you will feel like you are climbing the quickly ascending slope of an inverse parabola and you might think, "wow, how high can i get?" As the dopamine levels rise in your system the slope of the curve begins to level out, and while still high, you begin to think more clearly. Your blood vessels constrict slightly and more blood is available to the brain. You feel warmer. If you are sitting alone and thinking in this phase, your mind associates thinking with pleasure and higher dopamine. Anything you do while on the come up will be as pleasureable to your mind as eating or fucking. since your dopamine keeps rising due to your thoughts, whatever they are, it is best to think happy thoughts in this stage, like watching a comedy on TV, or remembering fond memories, things you did well or jokes you made. this is also the period of high creativity, since your mind will keep rewarding itself for creative thought, you will find creative new solutions to previous problems. Try playing a musical instrument, follow one improvisatory path until you've made it into something amazing, something new and unheard before. one thought train can lead to another and very creative new things can happen in your mind. it can be like epiphany after epiphany. When you reach peak dopamine levels, it's as if the last hour or so has been leading up to this mental orgasm and euphoria sets in, everything is right with the world and you feel you are a better person for this experience. Unfortunately the euphoria and mental clearness at the peak can last a mere 5-10 minutes. After you pass peak dopamine levels your thoughts have a tendency to become negative and critical, still very analyical of everything and every thought, but you often interpret them in a bad way instead of a good way. your brain previously thought of thinking as a pleasureable thing, now it thinks of it as a harmful thing, a bring down. Your brain fights with this idea since previously thinking was so pleasureable. It wants to stay high with pleasure but what it is feeling now from dopamine loss in the present must take precedence over previously good feelings. So thoughts become negative. And you start to realize, "by thinking so much i am just making things worse" but you keep thinking about ways to stop thinking so you can stop the bad feelings. And you realize how ironic it is, but irony isn't funny anymore because you're craving dopamine. And irony isn't putting out right now (that whore). Then you start to think about bad memories, times you messed up a situation or an opportunity, and you feel remorse. It is this downward slide that can lead into paranoid thoughts and even fright, since the body temperature falls and the brain is returning back to normal blood levels. It is probably best just to cover up and go to sleep at this point. Unless you can conjure up dopamine again, this time getting your dopamine from some other source, like eating, laughing, sexing, or with enough concious mental effort. If not, your body can start craving more dopamine so badly that it shivers and makes you want to curl up in fear from this downward spiral of thoughts. You are temporarily addicted to a drug, however, withdrawals only take 2-3 hours instead of days, and they begin instantly after the high. The drug you are addicted to is in your own brain, dopamine. Your body can interpret this desire for dopamine as an addiction, which could manifest in other ways, such as overeating or over-wanking in the next couple days. This phase is where the munchies come from, your body's easiest way to create more dopamine in the brain is to eat. If you make it past the wanting to go to sleep phase without sleeping, and the paranoia dopamine descent phase (by mental combat with it or eating), you enter the lazy, satisfied phase where you just want to lay back and watch tv for an hour or two and maybe munch a snack now and then. You are now reentering the baseline slowly and smoothly, and you have completed weed's bell curve of mental states." Welcome back to Planet Earth What do you think? Do you guys ever had a similar trips, or am i just crazy?
holy shit! YES! This is amazing, completely what I go through myself. Although I didn't make the dopamine connection myself it makes such perfect sense. If anybody viewing this thread just scrolled down to the replies, go back and read it all the way through. You won't regret it. Have you posted this anywhere else? It's really quite well written!
Thanks for taking the time to type that out, Random :cheers2: That was a pretty well-written and interesting chunk of text. Sounds like you also had some good weed on your hands.
Thank you Yes I posted it on Marijuana.com as well. I am glad to see I am pretty normal when it comes to these things, or at least there are others who have the same experience. I appreciate the words of encouragement. So you agree that dopamine from THC is the reason for the entire marijuana high, or do you think there might be another active chemical as well?
Only the finest medical grade Thanks, I was bored and I try to make my highs into creative experiences.
Yeah, I'm not as educated as I would like to be on the processes of the brain but it seems that it's got to trigger something that's already active to some extent during our normal thought processes. It's a much more complex set of feelings than just intoxication. At least that seems to be the case as much I can make sense of it. That and you know what those above the influence comercials tell us, "Did you know the average joint has up to 200 chemicals in it!"
Wow that was excellent! I disagree with that second half "negative thinking" section, I never get a negative affect during a weed trip, instead I get very sedated and lazy. It's not that my thoughts are negative, it's that I barely have any thoughts while coming down. I go from euphoria, super creativity, and dissociation to simply sedation and tiredness. I really like how you explain munchies. Dopamine is a fascinating thing.
I thought about mentioning the dissociation but I realized afterwards that it's all written in the 2nd person, as if i was observing myself while writing it, so I let it go without mentioning. Weird stuff. I agree about the bad thoughts, doesn't happen every time, well I have a lot of stuff going on right now so that probly contributed to it. I would say at least 60% of my trips have bad thoughts on the comedown though. it's probably better not to think much while coming down like you said. I noticed while writing it that writing it was making me feel worse towards the end, because I was forcing myself to think to finish writing, and that came through in the text. Next time I'm just gonna chill and watch TV in the comedown, maybe grab a snack and see if it still has the same negative effects. Thanks!
